5 Ways to Start an Online Business

Working online means you can work for yourself. Well at least you can work from home, in a coffee shop, on the beach or on a rocky mountain slope just as long as you have an internet connection. It doesn’t always mean being your own boss because you may find yourself working from home and having a virtual boss if you are lucky enough to find a business that will pay you an online salary.

As an online entrepreneur, I have spoken with a lot of people that use the internet to make a living. Mainly those that interact with the same website as me – upwork.com. I also looked through a lot of the jobs that are available on UpWork to see what kind of jobs are on offer for online freelancers.

Let’s just say the world is your oyster because just about any skill with software, applications, coding, marketing and more can be found.

Here are 5 jobs that you may not know exist online:

Support Desk/Customer Services

Yes, you read correctly. If you are currently stuck in a 9-5 customer services role in a busy office, then you have the skills to do the same job from home. There are plenty of companies out there that do not want to hire the office space, pay for the equipment, and have to pay their staff medical insurance! (Yes, no medical insurance can be a downside!). This leaves the door wide open for those that want to leave the office and work from home in a customer services role.

Data Inputting/Data Entry

Another job that usually means hiring someone to come into the office and add extra expenses when it could be done at home. There are many data entry jobs that can be anything from scouring the web to find email addresses marketers may find useful, to the transfer of information from one system to another.

Affiliate Marketing

Arguably one of the most difficult professions to get into. You will really need some people skills and a knack for persuasive argument. You also need to make sure that you are not just selling junk – this could quickly ruin your reputation; especially if you have built up an email list. The most popular affiliate marketing sites now are online gaming sites that promote games on behalf of other companies. One of my own personal sites is www.c9bet.com.

Online Games Testing

If you know where to look, you can volunteer to start testing games. Sounds like a dream job, right? For some it is. Once you get to learn the process of game testing and build up an understanding of the information the developers could really benefit from, you can build up your own portfolio. With that portfolio, you can start to charge a freelancer rate. The more you build relationships with various software developers, the higher the chances become of you landing paid jobs in this field.

Become an online writer

With billions of websites out there and bloggers such as myself, there are tons of writing jobs out there. I really enjoy writing or I would not be writing this blog! Every so often when I my thoughts are not in one place (because online work can do that to you), I like to write and so today I came up with 5 jobs online. If you are a very good writer, you can earn from $10 – $500+ per article you write. To get started you can try UpWork mentioned above – join and search for writing jobs.

Wrapping up, these are just some of the jobs you can build an online business with. All you need is a decent website that says who you are and what you specialize in. You don’t always have to have a website – I know a writer buddy of mine earning $3,000 – $5,000 a month on UpWork with no website to show off his talent.

However, I do suggest to you that a website would help if you are new. Keep it short and sweet – a one page homepage on a free Wix, Google or Weebly website will be suffice. As you build up your portfolio, you can begin adding your clients and examples/descriptions of your work to your website. After a while, you may be so busy that you will be able to hire someone to update your website for you!